To be honest....thats what I dont like about the Alpine is the cleaner look.....I kind of like the jazzy look.....just simply a preference But your making me swing towards the Alpine sooooo I am definitely going to give it a goood look. PM coming.

 

Rollingrock, I cant send you a PM....they say I havent posted enough or havent been registered long enough which both are wrong.....I dont know ......maybe you can send me a PM.

 

You cannot get them either. Need 100 posts.

send me a note to jason@priakos.com

 

i have a pioneer d3 and it shows everything that the ipod shows except for album art. it shows artist/album/song...well that is if it is all correct on the ipod. it must be on the ipod for the unit to be able to show it...maybe your friend doesn't have all that info on his ipod. i am assuming that the z2 would most definately show the same, seeing how it is the next step up from the d3 and should have the exact same ipod adapter. in my opinion my pioneer ipod interface is the best ipod interface to date.

i can't speak on the alpine or kenwood.

 

Awesome......thanks......anyone else got any comments ??? Anyone have the Eclipse AVN6610 ???

 

I have the avic-d3 with bluetooth, ipod, and soon to be sirius. The D3 lets you use sirius and xm.

You can watch ipod videos as long as its an ipod gen 5.5 and before (non classics).

I think the d3's reaction time from press of button to playing another song is very fast. But Im more of a person who puts lots of songs in a playlist and is not really looking for a specific artist but more like "i want rock.. now I want rap..etc"

The bluetooth works great with my verizon lg env but so far its having trouble pairing with my verizon treo 700p, but that might just be a verizon thing because they are know for being strict on bluetooth data restrictions.

 

Thank you for the input.....I love the Pioneer.....does the Z2 do everything that the D3 does ?? When you say older 5.5 Ipod Video does that mean that a newer Ipod video wont work ??

Thanks again

 

basically yes... im not sure on the video on z2 compared to d3.

In regards to ipod video 5.5, I mean right now to get video running to d3/z2 you need a ipod 5.5 or before. That means no classic/touch/iphone. As of right now apple changed some things and they do NOT run video, they run audio but some users are experiencing difficulty doing that.

Thats why everyone says ipod 5.5 or before and everything runs great.

Check out http://avic411.com for some more info on pioneer stuff. It will show all bypass and other related info.

 

Sweeeeeeeet.....thanks for the help on that one......Damn, there are so many units now to choose from......Ive heard details about the Pioneer and the Alpine.....anyone know anything about the Kenwood or the Eclipse new units ????

 

you should try emailing travis at kcautosound, he sells tons of kenwoods and knows everything about them. actually i believe he has one in his vehicle. i do know there is something strange about the bluetooth with the kenwood, it won't allow you to do a basic feature. travis told me all about it, but i have since forgot.

 

Thank you tons bro.....I will contact him :-)

 

Just finally had some time to stop by the forums and came across this one. Been soooo busy with installations here in the KC area. Averaging 6 to 8 remote starts daily plus whatever else I install (step bars, radios, speakers, power windows, locks....list goes on) Makes for some super long *** days.

In just over a year in a half I have had about eight navigation radios in my dash. Everything is for sale in my Excursion. I had a Eclipse AVN6610 that they let me demo when I thought about carrying the line, Pioneer units AVIC-N3 with the add-on 6 disk DVD changer under it, AVIC-D2, AVIC-D3, AVIC-Z1, AVIC-Z2. Then I finnished off with a Kenwood DDX7019 and then Kenwood gave me a DDX8019 Excelon piece that stays in the truck now.

After running all these units I have always come back to the Kenwood. Pretty much comes down to "more bang for the buck" Every manufacturer brings their own little thing to the table.

Eclipse has one the fastest processing speeds for it's calculation. That's pretty cool but really all the units have been pretty fast.

Alpine has the removeable portable navigation and the realistic touch that vibrates to feel like a button.

The Pioneer D3 is a cool unit for what it is but if you are wanting a system that is dual zone then the D3 is the loser of the bunch. It does not allow you to listed to the radio up front while the DVD plays to rear monitors. It's so hard to explain this to dealers when they sell the D3 to a customer and want to put an overhead or headrests in the car later. The D3 also requires you to have to take the nav disk out to play one.

The Z1 and the newer Z2 have been great units. Drawbacks are the price. The big selling point of the Pioneer unit is that you can store your music on the drive. BIG DEAL. If I own an iPod, why would I care to store my music on the drive. It burns at a slow speed anyways and takes awhile.

One really cool thing about the Kenwood units is that they come with a USB port. The Excelon 8019 comes with two. You can either run your iPod using the USB port or you can use a USB thumb drive instead. In my truck I run a four port USB hub and have four 2 gig thumb drives in it. I have broken the music down by genre on each thumb drive. Makes for easy demo for customers. Another plus that people have already mentioned is the ability to play iPod video and also display album art. I have yet to get around to figuring that out. Album art can also be displayed with the USB drives as well. I really like the ease of the Garmin interface. The unit runs off a drive so there is no disk that needs to be removed. The navigation is really simple to use and my wife has no trouble at all figuring it out. I personally run the XM NavTraffic tuner on mine that not only gives me XM radio but also traffic information, weather forcasts, and stock reports. The list goes on and on but I'm tired and need some rest.

 

1) I have both XM and Sirius w/ Z2 and it is perfect.
Kenwood can do both its just stupid how it works. For Sirius you go to the normal audio scrn and for the XM you have to go through the GPS side of things

2) Yes the Pioneer will allow you to do any jpeg files as a background.

3) The Pioneer will do video as long as it is hooked up via aux-in. The Z2 uses the CD-IB100II interface... Not great...

4) I like the Garmin except i think it looks cartoonish. The menus for the rest of the unit really suck!!!

5) I have the Z2 and its every bit as good as it looks if not better. I am so glad I bought this unit over the Alpine 205, Kenwood, and Pioneer D3.

The BT interface on the Z2 and D3 is great, you can dial off of the unit and do ANYTHING NEEDED. If you have the Z2 you can speak the number and never have to touch your phone.

The Eclipse 6495 is a great unit. But havent really gotten through the depths of it.

All in all I dont know where id be without my Z2 (prolly still dealing w/ mapquest maps and still lost in FL). The voice commands are great. You can do anything the unit is capable of via voice. I like the routing except for once it was odd but i still made it where I needed to go. I use the library daily. Love the icons, you can actually press the buttons!!! The only downfall is the Ipod interface. Its somewhat slow. But I just disconnect it find my song (if i want one in particular) or scroll through the playlists via the unit.

The Kenwood is a sweet unit except for the menus, It looks clean in the dash has a nice remote and has the ability for Garmin maps. It also has a negative tilt!! The main downfall is the menus. I cant stress how much I hate the menus. There are so many lists and then lists within the lists and even lists within those lists. After playing and installing the DNX7100 I was glad I didnt have it.

Eclipse is pretty straight forward. The only unit with 5v preouts. Built well but has a smaller screen 6.5 inches. Indash HDD and you can store music to it as well.

Alpine W205 its a decent unit. The removable nav is sweet but its not a pretty unit. The screen sits out 1.5 inches past the main unit. Ipod is almost unintuitive, just bland... The interface with the nav is ehh... I own a Blackbird and a W200 (in my 06 Explorer) and have installed a W205 in the xD I did for SEMA. It has a great sound by far the Best SQ deck on this list. But the lack of features makes it lack luster for me...

 

Guys I cant thank you enough for all the information you have given me....I think I am down to the Z2 and the Kenwood DNX7100.....Im hopefully going to go find a dealer around here that carries them and test them out to decide which one is for me. Its wild how the manufacturers just cant get their units with everything everyone wants.....every unit seems to have one little thing I dont like so you just have to find which detail is least important.

Any more input will be appreciated....thanks again :-)

Otis Da Whino

 

If you truly down to those too, not to offend anyone, but the Kenwood is the better choice given that you want the video IPOD and control it from the deck. Something that Pioneers don't do. From personal experince, Pioneers can develop alternator whine...its an inherent problem in the AV units.(DVD 5700 and up) A great place to get really detailed info on these and others is www.the12volt.com There are some CRAZY smart people over there. I think you will be happy with it.


EDIT: I haven't seen a PAC bypass for the Kenwood unit yet but I suspect they will bypass like the others. You need to research that.